Jewelry Bells by Gordon R. Barnett

Post navigation

Second Thoughts…

As I have spent the time to set up this format for the exploration into playing with a blog, I have had occasion to wonder the “why” of it.

My life is complicated enough without another method to write what used to be as simple as picking up my book & pen to write while having morning coffee in bed. [except for the difficulty of maintaining inky rapidographs!] I’ve written a journal inside bound blank books for 30 years… I have a trunk full of them. I also have written letters which I photocopied top mail to a list of family & friends. I have a bit of a reputation for sharing such musings in a particularly well developed calligraphy. But… after resisting for much longer than most I finally got a computer four years ago & I’ve taught myself to type with enough facility that I now enjoy using the keyboard… much to the detriment of my previous mode. I do not pick up that blank book nearly so frequently…

Thus I am curious about blogging as an experiment to facilitate the process with which I have several histories. Will it become a comfortable way to journal in a new way, or will it bog down in the digital complications which frequently irritate me? Will it continue to irritate me with the general lack of my prefered aesthetic preferences? There is so much of simplicity lacking on “pages” such as viewed on this machine. There are too many choices I would prefer to avoid for their attempt toward clarity inside what looks like a cacophany of fonts & design not remotely my own. Computer screens are full of predictable & mostly ugly substitutes for pen & paper. Still, this presents other possibilities as well… I will counsel patience for this period of testing these new waters.

So much of today has been about the nuts’n’bolts of setting up a format on which to begin. I’ve watched the day turn from occasional brightness on the more familiar waters of the Puget Sound as Sol tried pushing through the standard northwest overcast before what becomes near-dusk-at-noon in this season. Our exposure on this eastern side of the Island denies us much of the afternoon sun on even the best of summer days, but around winter solstice, when the low sun disappears behind the trees to the south, even before reaching those in the west, it only increases the effect of the shortness of the days at Soundcliff!

This was the first of two Holiday Open Studio weekends for which I have been preparing for months. The weather was dry & often even pleasent, so perhaps that helps explain the wonderful turnout. I was busy the entire time & wrote a record business. The bells continue to create joy & wonder for new clientele as well as many who have visited the studio for years… thus creating goodness for me in turn!

One part of that was an excuse to pursue this recurring impulse to “blog”…

While the concept of “find[ing] myself composing my blog even as part of the experience” read rather foreign to me, Stephen recognised it as the quinessential mindset of a reporter. Thus I remember that I’ve done that as well, it is, I suppose, rather the immediacy & openess of blogging which still a bit foreign to me. I’m catching on…